Meeting vs Appointment
Meeting and appointment are words that are commonly used in our daily lives. Most of us take these words to be synonymous and even use them interchangeably. If we have an appointment with our dentist, it means that we are meeting with him, isn’t it? However, there are subtle differences between meeting and appointment that will be clear after reading this article.
Appointment
An appointment is an event that is set at a future date and time and involves you and another person. For example, you mention an appointment with your doctor in your phone or diary so as to remember about it. It is an activity that shows that your time is blocked in the near future, and this block of time only involves you and the other person you intend to meet. You could be meeting a business client, the teacher of your son, your dentist, or an official in the government. An appointment is formal fixing of date and time to have a meeting with someone.
Meeting
Meeting is an event and an activity that is very similar to an appointment. The only difference is that it involves other people too. There is also a place designated for a meeting. You can create a meeting and send meeting requests to people whom you want to attend this meeting. It can be a workers meeting, dealers meeting, teachers meeting, and so on. Meeting has a purpose and agenda.
What is the difference between Meeting and Appointment?
• Appointment is an event or activity that requires a block of time at a future date and time that is set to meet another person.
• Meeting is similar to appointment but involves other persons, and there is also a designated place where people invited to attend the meeting reach.
• You create an appointment, and there are no attendees other than you, whereas there are other attendees in the case of a meeting.
• If you are the organizer, you send invites to others to attend a meeting.
• You indicate an appointment to show that you are busy at a later date and time, but this event involves no one else, except you and the person you intend to meet.
• You can have an appointment with your doctor, client, son’s teacher, and so on.
• The examples of meetings are workers meeting, teachers meeting, doctors meeting, meeting between management and workers, and so on.
Eui-Young Chon says
It’s not necessarily true that the difference between appointment and meeting is that the latter involves other people. In Merriam-Webster Learner’s Dictionary, meeting is defined as “a situation or occasion when two people see and talk to each other.” You could also have a case such as: they started dating each other soon after their first meeting.